VALDOSTA — He counts only one close call in his years as a Christian missionary.

Isaac Apenteng Yeboah coordinates his Christian ministry in African countries where Christians “vanish,” he said; where they are abducted, beaten and executed.

Yeboah, a native of the African country of Ghana, said he has never felt peril. He didn’t know he was endangered during his close call until later.

He’d been warned to speak carefully during a sermon.

Instead of heeding the warning, Yeboah told the congregation that the leaders of numerous other religions are dead in their graves but Jesus lives. Words that could have led to his being taken into custody, his abduction, his death.

After the sermon, two men came forward to meet with him. They told Yeboah they had been sent to the service to monitor him. But instead of taking him into custody or reporting him, the men said they had found the light of Christ in his sermon.

They had been converted to Christianity.

“I was never really in any danger,” Yeboah said, a smile across his 54-year-old face. “It’s my lifestyle.”

He is the West African director of the Mailbox Club, an area that is predominantly Muslim. He has been in Valdosta since last weekend. He is scheduled to be in South Georgia through early November.

Yeboah is the featured speaker at the Mailbox Club’s annual fundraising dinner, 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25, James H. Rainwater Conference Center, said John Mark Eager, Mailbox Club director.

The Mailbox Club is a Valdosta-based ministry that has established missions in dozens of countries reaching millions of children for generations. Children are taught the Scriptures by trained nationals using the Mailbox Club Bible lessons printed in numerous languages worldwide.

Yeboah not only uses the Mailbox Club materials in his mission. He is a product of the Mailbox Club.

Ghana is a majority Christian nation, Yeboah said. He was the fourth of six children and the only son to a father who is Presbyterian and a mother who is Pentecostal. His sisters were raised Presbyterian. He was raised Pentecostal.

“As the only son, I was close to my mother,” he said of his religious upbringing.

At the age of 11, Yeboah had a friend who earned a Mailbox Club certificate and a hard-cover Bible from the organization. Yeboah signed up for the Mailbox literature. He wanted a Bible of his own.

A lesson regularly arrived in the mail. He completed the lesson and mailed it back. Then the next lesson arrived in the mail. He finished the course and earned a certificate and his own Bible.

“That day was the most important day in my life,” Yeboah said of the day when his Mailbox Club certificate and Bible arrived. “It was the happiest day of my life.”

He has been committed to Christianity and the ministry ever since. He became involved professionally with the Mailbox Club through a collaboration with Operation Christmas Child. He became involved with the club and rose to the position of West Africa director.

More than a dozen nations fall into his Mailbox Club jurisdiction, where they try getting Christian literature and help to millions of children who live on the streets in these predominantly Muslim African nations.

In some rural areas, children are recruited for religious schools. Parents let their children go because they believe the young ones will have a better life in the prosperous city.

In the city, leaders send the children to beg in the streets with a quota they must meet. If the children fail to raise the assigned amount of money, Yeboah said they are brutally beaten.

To escape the beatings, many of the children run away. But since they have no way home to their families, the children, ages ranging from 3-14 years old, become homeless and beg on the streets. 

Eighty percent die, Yeboah said, of starvation, sickness and human sacrifice.

The Mailbox Club spreads its Christian literature and aid to these children through youth ministers who train youngsters in the faith, how to read and in becoming youth leaders.

“An elder person would be beaten or killed for doing this,” Yeboah said, “but with a child, people just think they are playing.”

Reaching children is important, he said, in saving their lives now and preparing for the future.

Yeboah said Africa is projected to have a population of one billion children by 2050.

“Africa will have the most children in the world,” he said.

And while Yeboah works to reach as many as possible, he knows it can mean helping one child at a time.

In addition to his and wife Laura’s four biological children, the Yeboahs have two adopted children. He is also working to better the life of a child in his neighborhood.

He shows a video on his phone. A small boy sneaks around the residential buildings of a compound. Yeboah explained the compound is his home. The boy is a neighbor.

The boy steals items from the Yeboahs then silently leaves. If not for the video, Yeboah said his family would have never known.

Yeboah took the matter to the boy’s father, who said he would report the matter to police. Police would have sent the boy to a youth-detention facility.

Yeboah told the father he didn’t want to report the boy to police. He asked the father why the boy isn’t in school. The father said he cannot afford to send the boy to school.

The Yeboahs bought the boy a school uniform. They paid for his books. They enrolled him in school.

Months later, the boy still attends school and has become a leader in the ministry.

“He has brought 19 children to Sunday school,” Yeboah said.

In saving one child, more are saved.